


we were giants

by orphan_account



Series: that's quite a lot of fahc aus [3]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-27 09:04:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12578320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There’s an incident.“Anyone want to tell me what this is? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure it’s bloody superpowers.”Together they try to work out who would be a worse group of people to have these kind of things at their fingertips, which ends up a lot like a game of Cards Against Humanity.





	1. Chapter 1

 

There’s an incident.

“Anyone want to tell me what this is? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure it’s bloody _superpowers_ ,” Gavin says giddily.

“Shut up,” say Michael and Ryan, unintentionally in unison, because they both know he’s right.

Together they try to work out who would be a worse group of people to have these kind of things at their fingertips, which ends up a lot like a game of Cards Against Humanity.

“I mean,” Geoff says helplessly. “If we got ‘em?”

“No one,” Jack says, a lot more helplessly, “can ever know.”

 

*

 

It's a normal enough day, and then two of Jeremy walk in. Michael has to visualise icy swiss waterfalls and icebergs and shit like that for a good thirty seconds just to keep from setting light to the damn chair.  
  
Then again, Michael supposes, that is a normal day now.   
  
"So this is how it's going to go..." the Jeremy on the left begins.  
  
"...there's a fifty in it for anyone who..." the Jeremy on the right continues.  
  
"... can tell which one of us..." the Jeremy on the left adds, stealing one of Alfredo's chips.  
  
"... is the real Li’l J." They finish in chorus.  
  
"Geoff and Michael aren't allowed to play," the one on the right adds, thoughtfully. "Geoff has unfair advantage-"  
  
"-and Michael knows all the right questions to ask."  
  
Jack pretends to be offended not to be included in the exceptions, while Ryan and Lindsay and Matt and the rest start asking increasingly ridiculous questions. Fairly suggestive questions.

Oh, god dammit. Michael covers the scorch mark on the chair arm as quick as he can, and hopes no one noticed. Geoff shoots him an inquiring look, and Michael returns it with his best _fuck you very much_ pout. Geoff looks amused, and like he's about to say something, when Lindsay mentions getting them in the showers and being able to tell for sure.  
  
The Jeremy on the left immediately reaches for his fly with a shit-eating grin, but it's the one on the right that Geoff is glaring at when he yelps and jumps out of his seat like he's been electrocuted, then rolls up the magazine he was reading and hits him over the head with it. "Jesus _christ!_ Just... oh god, keep that to yourself!" He blinks, and seems to realise everyone's staring at him. "I - I mean, damn it, just _don't_." Then he storms out of the room, leaving one utterly confused Jeremy, and one red-faced one.  
  
The air tightens and shimmers, and the red-faced Jeremy turns in to a red-faced Gavin (which is to say, _Gavin_ ), who looks very put out. "What the hell was that about? He ruined the game."  
  
The real Jeremy shrugs awkwardly. "I don’t know, I guess some people can't cope with two of me-"  
  
"Really?" Jack says, "So, did you just mentally undress yourself?"  
  
If Jeremy sinks any further in to the depths of total obliviousness, Michael thinks he might just punch him. If Gavin doesn't make a move soon, he's definitely going to punch _him_. He can't take it anymore; he can only imagine what it's like for Geoff.  
  
Everyone's attention is once more distracted, this time by the abrupt burst of flames on the armrest of a perfectly innocent chair. Okay, so maybe Michael hasn't got much right to judge when it comes to denial.  

 

*

  
There’s an incident.

Some of the... ensuing changes, for lack of a better term (and because "superpowers" pisses off Burnie, despite being entirely awesome and perfectly accurate) take longer to show than others, but after nearly a week it becomes pretty clear to Michael and everyone else that Jeremy isn't showing anything.  
  
"It's, um. Probably a good thing." Gavin says, kind about it, and Jeremy shrugs wordlessly and keeps on playing Cuphead, getting his ass kicked then, eventually, kicking ass.  
  
"Maybe we just need to look a little harder," Michael offers. "Hey, maybe you can breathe underwater. Want me to shove your head in a bucket and see?"  
  
Jeremy cracks a little smile at that.  
  
It's still strange, even though Jeremy doesn't mention it, just listens silently as the rest of them whine and fight and boast and commiserate as they stretch the limits of the things they can do. He doesn't even complain when Alfredo starts to use his newfound speed in-game, just tries his best to react as much and as fast, and pats Alfredo sympathetically on the shoulder after Ryan notices and shouts him down for doing anything relating to the _'_ changes' on the camera. Michael catches Geoff looking at Jeremy, sometimes, looking worried. He corners him one day as they're leaving, asks him what it is.  
  
"I can't see," Geoff says, and the emphasis he puts on it makes Michael realise it's not just a figure of speech. Geoff has been so good at keeping out of their heads so far, but there’s some things he can’t help but notice. "It’s… I don't know. Different. It's a lot."  
  
"Eh, he was always different in the head," Michael says impatiently, and Geoff rolls his eyes.  
  
He lets it go, though, because he has enough to worry about himself. Then he has the car accident.  
  
More precisely, he doesn't have; just misses, in the carpark, and the few people still around look up in shock when his car scrapes past someone else’s, setting off all the alarms. But that's all it is, a scrape. Or all it should have been, except now the inside of Michael’s car is on fire.  
  
He's been having trouble with it for a while, flaring up quite literally when he gets emotional, or is surprised. It makes sense, then, that the panic of an impending crash would set him off. But the car is too much of an enclosed space, and no one knows what to do.  
  
"He's fine, he's fine, he can't burn-" Gavin calls, eyes wide, more a question than anything. Inside, they can just make out Michael, doubling over.  
  
"No, but he can choke," Ryan says bleakly, and he hears a few people swear loudly. They're running up to the car, but the sheer heat rolling of it stops people in their tracks. Jack can see that one of the handles is a melted mess.  
  
Oh, hell. Jack reaches in and tries to grab it. He hears the hiss as his skin touches metal, flinches away, although since everything went a little weird even this is no worse than the sting he's got in the past from a bath run too hot. But for anyone else, it would burn the flesh fro-  
  
Next to him, Jeremy is reaching out too, to help. He recognises it too slowly, calls out a desperate warning too slowly, sees Jeremy's brain catch up with what he's doing too late. Jeremy's hand is on the door.  
  
Both Jeremy and Jack's eyes move slowly from where his hand is to meet each other in blank incomprehension, then back again. Jeremy isn't touching the blisteringly hot metal; it has literally bent away from his skin, a handprint shaped indent in the car door keeping the red-hot metal far enough not to hurt him.  
  
For a few heartbeats, nothing happens. Then Jeremy looks up at Jack again, and very quietly says "Move."  
  
Jack doesn't need to be told twice. As he stumbles back, Jeremy's face scrunches in concentration, and then he draws his hand away. What happens as he does is really something Jack can only understand in comparison to something in a film, not only by all appearances in slow motion, but a surreal unfolding of every element of the car in to the air around them. The doors, side panels, the roof; a thousand tiny bolts and pistons and wires, the seats unravelling into individual threads and all of it spiralling out, a flower unfurling to the sun, leaving only Michael to fall to his knees on empty asphalt. Flames flicker and die in the air with nothing to cling to.  
  
Michael chokes and coughs on his hands and knees, and everyone rushes to him, Jeremy included. "Didn't... see..." he splutters, and Geoff shushes him, rubbing comforting circles on to his back. "It's okay, you’re okay."  
  
"Holy fuck," someone says breathlessly, and Geoff looks up for a moment to see who said it. Instead, he sees what they're looking at. Michael's car is sitting on the other side of the carpark, a little singed around the edges, but in every other way, apparently entirely untouched. Remade as impossibly as it had been unmade. Geoff slowly, carefully pokes Jeremy in the shoulder. He still hasn't turned away from Michael, is tugging at his shirt with frantic concern.  
  
When he sees the car, Jeremy's eyes go very big while his voice goes very small, and more than a bit lost. "Oh," he says, and then; "I just wanted it to move."  
  
It's Michael who eventually breaks the silence, sounding horribly croaky but no longer struggling to breathe. He smiles shakily and grabs Jeremy and wraps his arms around him. "Thank you," he growls, “but also, what the fuck, Li’l J?”

 

*

 

Unusually for him Jack gets a bit drunk one night, takes a knife to his arm and can't even make a mark in the skin, impenetrable and barely even stinging - he rings Geoff and happily rants about being invincible for a while before passing out. Clearly, even superpowers do not extend to alcohol.

They’re all at his house the next morning, pretending like they haven’t been there all night. They’ll never admit it but he might be the one they are most protective of.

Ryan, for his part, is whose change is first to show. He’s distracted by conversation and doing what should be walking into a door but ends up being walking through it.

“We could do a heist in _real life,_ ” Gavin says, absolutely delighted and absolutely unfazed by the fact that all this is not normal.

“Can you go through people?” Geoff asks, slightly fazed by all of this. “Jesus dicks, please don’t go through people. Specifically not me.”

He doesn’t have much to worry about. Ryan realises, a few days later, that if he knows a place well enough and concentrates then he can be there in just a blink. The worst he uses it for is to grab a diet coke whenever he wants for about a week before they all catch on to what Ryan’s doing, and what he can do.

 

*

  
Burnie has a headache building. He rubs his temples in slow circling movements.  
  
"I can help with that," Geoff offers quietly, and Burnie shakes his head at the thought of someone just able to reach in there and take it away, perhaps a bit more vehemently than is polite.  
  
"No, I'm fine. Just... run me through this again. Who can fly?"  
  
"No one," Jack says quickly. "But a lot of people wanted to. Uh, try it? And you know how Jeremy is with saying no."  
  
Oh, Burnie does. He really does. The headache flares.  
  
"So he's been lifting someone in the air. With his _mind._ "  
  
Geoff and Jack exchange a look. "Not so much a person as... people."  
  
Burnie regards them flatly. "People. How many people."  
  
There's a long, long silence.  
  
"Everyone?" Geoff says, and sort of pre-emptively flinches.  
  
Burnie looks across his office to where Jeremy is curled, hugging at Michael's favourite jacket, knocked-out asleep at eleven in the morning. Geoff reaches over and gently strokes his hair.  
  
"We're going to have words about this later," Burnie promises, "but for now, you better get everyone and have them draw straws. In a few minutes someone's breaking it to HR that we fucked the new hire up enough he needs to go home for a few days, and it sure as hell isn't going to be me."

 

*

 

It's not weird, Gavin tells himself. It's not. It's natural curiosity. You can't just give a man the ability to turn into anyone he wants and not expect him to... to... try certain things out.  
  
Well. Not that anyone gave it to him, anyway. Or to any of them. It just sort of happened. So, really, none of it is his fault.  
  
He's still locked the door, though. He positions himself in front of the mirror and breathes in and out deeply. Someone. Only, it seems sort of invasive, anyone he doesn't know, and people he does know is even worse. And the people he knows well enough to get it right; well, that narrows it down a hell of a lot.

Ok. So no one, then. Think of no one. Just... someone else. But no one in particular.  
  
The shift is like a shiver all up his skin. Kind of addictive, he's been finding, in its own way.  
  
He opens one eye tentatively to take a look, catches a glimpse of the face he's wearing in the mirror and just about has time to think _oh, hell no_ before the door clicks and he remembers he gave Michael a fucking key. He is also currently in a shape that is maybe very much like Michael.  
  
"Gav… oh my god you _fucking idiot_ \- "  
  
"Get out, get out!" Gavin screams, diving for the bed and, more importantly, the bedsheet. The change dropped the moment Michael started yelling; now it's just Gavin, one part furious to three parts horrified, and totally naked.  
  
"What the hell are you doing, why am I naked _?_ Just - why?" Michael moans.  
  
"I didn't mean to!" Gavin yells back, pulling the sheet up in to some kind of demented toga. "I just wanted to see if I could be someone else! And it just _happened_! I wasn't trying to! Oh god, this is wrong."  
  
"On lots of levels!" Michael is waving his hands around erratically. "New rule, you don’t get to be me.”

They both spend the whole next week pretending very hard they aren’t thinking about it in ways they shouldn’t.

 

  
*

 

They corner him, is what they do. Brats.

"You've been avoiding us."

Geoff looks everywhere but Michael. "Don't be ridiculous," he says. "I haven't." It's close enough to true.  
  
"Oh, sure." Jeremy chimes in, frustrated and amused all at once, and so fond Geoff almost feels angry. He's not sure he's up to it, right now. Jeremy usually is so considerate, so guarded. "You're not avoiding Ryan. And you're not avoiding Jack. It's just us that's the problem."  
  
"Fucking smart-ass," Geoff snarls without feeling, and leans back against the wall, takes his time. "I - does it matter?"  
  
Gavin frowns. "It matters, because it bothers you so much. I mean... it's not a problem, with others, or else you can pretend it isn't." The freeze-burn of worry appears, creeping behind Geoff's eyes even though Gavin is clearly trying his best to keep it pressed down, away. "Are we doing something? Making it worse?"  
  
"Yes," Geoff says, in a tone that says _no, you idiot, not like that._ "You're being you and he's being him, and you’re incorrigible - what, you need me to tell you how it is? So bright I can't think. Of course you're doing something. And I'm glad, I just need you to fuck off a little bit." He wishes he had better words. It's easy, seeing and knowing, it's the telling that he can't quite make work.

“When you’re around each other you make all the lights go bright, up in here,” Geoff says, tapping at his own temple, then gesturing vaguely between them. That barely covers how it is, something he can see there glowing with life and warmth. “I can’t tell your feelings from his, it's fucking ridiculous.”

“So hey, congratulations,” he adds, because he’s only an asshole part-time. “But also take all this sappy shit away from me for a five-minute break, now and then? I hired you people so I get to tell you what to do.”

They give him space. After a little while he starts to work it out. How to build walls in his head to protect himself and protect other people from him. He just needs a little time to work it out, this is all kind of new.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

It’s a sort of fucking cool, how having Li’l J beneath one of them, pressing him down to the mattress and getting him a bit worked up can make the whole damn room get a bit worked up.

As most of the ornaments and mid-sized furniture floats at head-height or somewhere close Jeremy slams his eyes shut, offering mumbled apologies and holding his hands out with his wrists pressed together. It’s not a perfect system, but sometimes the more restrained he is the less this kind of thing happens, the less he messes things up.

Gavin and Michael share a look. They are both aware how Jeremy is holding himself back in every kind of way, convinced that this is the Michael and Gavin show and he’s only there as a fleeting amusement. If he doesn’t really want to be held still, or not for the right reasons, then it would be the wrong thing to do. But at the same time, making him think he’s only there to do pretty tricks would be just as bad.

Gavin comes to the rescue.

“Jeremy,” he asks, taking the offered wrists in his hands instead but not quite doing anything with them, not pinning Jeremy down. “I could be literally anyone,” he lies immediately, but with some more practice it will be true. “Hey, who is on your list, famous people you’d get a free pass for? I could be Audrey Hepburn, I could be Idris Elba, I could be-”

Jeremy looks confused, like this is a test he didn’t study for. He hesitates on briefly though, before passing with flying colours. “Be you?” he asks softly. “Please?”

Michael pounces, metaphorically. Also, slightly literally. “Yep,” he says while staring Jeremy down, and smirking a little, eyebrow raised pointedly. “You, as you are. Sounds good.”

It’s the Michael and Gavin show in the sense that they’ve decided Jeremy is there to stay and they will not be deterred.

Also, when they get him right on the edge and then bring him back from it a couple times in a row the furniture is literally spinning up in the air and out of control, which is pretty fucking cool.

When Michael decides enough is enough and kisses gentle and takes care of him so Jeremy knows he did good and feels it too, everything falls to rest like it's softly cushioned from gravity. That is very fucking cool in different, entirely comforting ways.

 

*

 

“You all keep mentioning the, quote unquote, ‘incident’.” Burnie says, having semi-kidnapped Geoff for a drink. “Can you tell me anything else?”

“Nope,” Geoff informs him cheerfully, “we signed things for the government.”

Burnie is about 95 percent sure that is bullshit, possibly even 98 percent if he’s being really precise about it.

Geoff relents slightly. “What do you want from me?” he asks, and gestures widely. “Lots of light and then-” he slams the table to demonstrate. “Incident.”

“Okay,” Burnie says, deciding to aim for placating rather than anything else.

“It knew us, though.” Geoff says idly. “Knew exactly what it, they, whatever was doing.”

That piques Burnie’s interest. “Interesting,” he says, encouragingly.

Geoff shrugs. “All fits, you know? Jack can be soft but he’s resilient as fuck. Ryan enjoys proving he has a shortcut, outpacing people. Gavin will try any idea comes into his head on for size, and Michael is obviously Michael.” He smiles slightly. “Jeremy has far too much going on in his head for it all to stay in there without shaking the ground a little.”

“-and you micromanage to the point of getting inside people’s brains.” Burnie finishes.

Geoff punches his shoulder, sulkily rather than angrily. “Shut up.”

 _Don’t be more than 50 percent sure it’s bullshit about the government cover-up,_ arrives the thought fully formed in Burnie’s head. _X-files stuff going on here._

“Fuck off, Geoff, don’t you dare.” Burnie snaps out. Geoff fucking giggles.

 

*

 

Trevor knows everything now.

It sounds like a joke, or maybe a euphemism, but the way he explains it is like he has a google search running in the back of his thoughts whenever he wants it. He also explains that this metaphor is extremely helpful and therefore not to worry that it is also extremely inaccurate.

He doesn’t give Geoff a headache, because apparently knowing everything also involves knowing how to shield it away and, for once, give Geoff some goddamn peace and quiet. Geoff has decided Trevor is getting employee of the month for the rest of his life.

The fact that Jeremy usually spends the most time with Matt is useful, because they figure given how long his thing took to turn up makes him best placed to talk around how Matt is taking even longer. Or they think that, for a while. Matt and Jeremy know better and Jeremy will keep any kind of secret if Matt asks him to, as much as it breaks his heart a little bit as he tries to explain that they are all out of their depth here and Matt isn’t the only one.

They fuck up a video.

They fuck up a video at exactly 2.34pm, and then they fuck it up at 2.34pm about six times in a row.

“I’m so sorry,” Matt is saying frantically, “I didn’t mean to reset. It was just five minutes. I’m sorry, I am so-”

“Reset?” Jack says, slightly dazedly, all of them trying to reconcile the last hour or so of overlapping memories.

“The fuck was that?” Michael says, somewhat more on point.

Jeremy moves to Matt while he tries to stammer out an explanation, a protective presence. It’d be less intimidating if they all didn’t know Jeremy recently moved everything on set an inch or so to the side before starting just to fuck with broadcast’s framing shots, then moved each and every thing back in just a moment with just a thought when people realised and he was laughing and apologising in the same breath. They were sitting on the furniture, they felt it.

“We did stuff over again a few times. Matt didn’t do it on purpose. And we got the video.”

“Hey,” Geoff says, very gentle but not for any reason other than he wants to be, mussing at Matt’s hair. Matt relaxes a little. “Kid, we’re all weird now. Just let us know if you do that, even if it’s an accident.”

“Are we an hour older than ourselves?” Gavin asks the room at large, then immediately confusing himself. “Older than our own- uh, what?”

“Oh,” Jeremy and Ryan say quietly, surprised and apologetic in varying different measures. At around the same time the screaming fight that led off of fuck-up number four that didn't happen anymore resurfaces in everyone’s minds.

Michael, to general surprise, provides a calm voice of reason. “Technically,” he says, sounding almost bored, “that got reset, or what the fuck Matt said. So you never actually yelled that at each other.”

“That’s good,” Jack says, like they all don’t know he’d been egging them on the worst. “We’ll take a win on a technicality.”

They take the win, and never discuss it.

 


End file.
